Medvedev: Links to West will thaw, just like spring

RUSSIAN President Dmitri Medvedev has declared a "spring-like" thaw in relations with Britain and the West as he prepares to arrive in London for the G20 summit.

Mr Medvedev said that his country's dispute with Britain was easing and pointed to wider hopes that Moscow will embark on a "new start" with President Barack Obama on nuclear disarmament and foreign policy.

In an interview with the BBC, he held out the prospect of fresh co-operation over Iran's nuclear programme and made clear that he was optimistic about persuading Washington to amend its "son of Star Wars" missile defence plans. Mr Medvedev said that some of the issues which have dogged Moscow's relations with Britain could be resolved - although he ruled out the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

"I think that the current climate is spring-like, like the weather outside. There is positive change," he joked.

He suggested that a resolution could be found to the spying row which saw the British Council forced to close its offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg last year. Moscow had claimed that the cultural organisation was a "nest of spies".

"Frankly speaking, I don't see any particular problem here. It was a sequence of some regrettable incidents. Some of them had to do with Great Britain, others might have been to do with Russia, but it is not a systemic problem," he said.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband broadly welcomed the Russian president's remarks. "I think it is significant and it is important. We have big issues we need to engage with, grapple with, with Russia," he told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.

Mr Medvedev will meet Mr Obama for the first time when he arrives in London on Wednesday. In a bilateral event that some view as more significant than the bid to secure a global deal on the economy, the pair will begin a dialogue on the Start nuclear disarmament treaty and discuss the US plan to site ballistic missiles in eastern Europe.